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Literary Criticism Poetry

Hopeless Love

Boiardo, Ariosto, and Narratives of Queer Female Desire

by (author) Mary-Michelle DeCoste

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Oct 2009
Category
Poetry, Lesbian Studies, Italian
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780802096845
    Publish Date
    Oct 2009
    List Price
    $52.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442697447
    Publish Date
    Dec 2009
    List Price
    $51.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781487565176
    Publish Date
    Aug 2024
    List Price
    $29.95

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Description

Book three of the Italian poet Matteo Maria Boiardo's epic poem Orlando innamorato (Orlando in Love) was published posthumously in 1494; in 1532, the poet Ludovico Ariosto published his final version of a sequel, Orlando furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando). At the end of his poem, Boiardo tells the tale of the princess Fiordispina's unfulfilled desire for the maiden warrior Bradamante, a story that Ariosto retells in the body of his later work.

In Hopeless Love, Mary-Michelle DeCoste examines both versions of the Fiordispina and Bradamante episode using feminist and queer theory. DeCoste then links these treatments of queer female desire to their wider cultural contexts by exploring their antecedents in genres such as medieval romance epic and hagiography and by examining similar tropes in other sixteenth-century romance epics. An important work on a previously overlooked subject, Hopeless Love uncovers the diffusion of queer female desire in Italian literature and promotes a better understanding of sexuality in medieval and Renaissance Europe.

About the author

Mary-Michelle DeCoste is an associate professor of Italian studies at the University of Guelph, and in 2010 she held a Craig Hugh Smyth Visiting Fellowship at Villa I Tatti, Harvard University’s Centre for Italian Renaissance Studies, Florence, Italy. Publications include Hopeless Love: Boiardo, Ariosto, and Narratives of Queer Female Desire (2009), as well as articles in journals Quaderni d’Italianistica and Heliotropia and chapters in a number of edited books.

Mary-Michelle DeCoste's profile page

Editorial Reviews

&lsquo:This slim volume makes a substantial contribution to the study of queer desire in Renaissance literature… Hopeless Love is well worth the attention of both scholars and students of Italian renaissance literature, narrative theory, gender and queer studies.’

Quaderni D'Italianistica vol 31:02:10

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